§ Mr. AllenTo ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer to what extent his Department has studied the possibility of replacing locally collected local authority income with a hypothecated amount within the income tax system; and if he will list such research or studies which have taken place over the last 10 years.
§ Mr. MajorThis approach of "assigned revenues" has been considered and rejected in successive studies of local 87W government finance, most recently in the 1983 White Paper "Rates: Proposals for rate limitation and reform of the rating system" (Cmnd. 9008). It is not the practice of the Government to hypothecate revenues from a particular tax to particular areas of expenditure.